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FBI To Announce Significant New Wiretap Push
Backdoors Galore In Everything From Skype To BitTorrent

Despite the fact the phone companies now act as part time FBI surveillance analysts with a fleeting regard to law, and dump U.S. citizen data and voice traffic wholesale through NSA listening posts, Uncle Sam still apparently isn't happy with its wiretap authority. The FBI has been making their intentions clear in recent months that they not only want to start pushing hard again for ISP retention data, but the DOJ and FBI are also launching a new push for laws that would allow the easier access to a wider variety of information transmitted via new Internet communications platforms. According to CNET's resident Declan McCullagh, this push goes into high gear this week, and covers everything from Skype to BitTorrent:

quote:
FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni will outline what the bureau is calling the "Going Dark" problem, meaning that police can be thwarted when conducting court-authorized eavesdropping because Internet companies aren't required to build in backdoors in advance, or because technology doesn't permit it. Any solution, according to a copy of Caproni's prepared comments obtained by CNET, should include a way for police armed with wiretap orders to conduct surveillance of "Web-based e-mail, social networking sites, and peer-to-peer communications technology."
The potential abuse of such backdoors by both government and hackers is fairly obvious, and the government already faces an EFF lawsuit for refusing to answer inquiries into why exactly existing technology isn't suitable to accomplish investigations. Oddly when this push is discussed in the general press, the conversation fails to mention existing surveillance systems like Echelon, the wholesale largely unaccountable wiretapping that already occurs , or the fact phone companies now gleefully dump all your data into Uncle Sam's lap anyway.

While the FBI and DOJ may be pushing for some new wiretap powers and may or may not be seeking additional backdoors, an important thing to remember about the viewable, public part of the intelligence community (these FBI/DOJ press events) is their primary thrust is always to retroactively legalize things they've illegally been doing for years -- if not decades.

Most recommended from 60 comments



chazpaw
Premium Member
join:2007-03-28
Terrell, TX

3 recommendations

chazpaw

Premium Member

FBI To Announce Significant New Wiretap Push

There are many variations, but this sums up my feelings- »en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ma ··· 3%B6ller

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I did not speak out;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

2 recommendations

battleop

Member

Different President but the same crap.

Where is the "Evil Obama and Biden" outcry in this? We heard nothing but how evil Bush and Cheney were for this but now it's just the evil guberment.